Age lines

Went to see a performance of "The Foreigner" by Larry Shue. It ran long for me. My companions said certain sections dragged. That wasn't my problem with it. "The Foreigner" just hooked more cars onto the long blurred train of country-house dramas that I've seen performed in high schools, middle-schools, community colleges, dinner theaters, and suburban repertory theatres over forty years. I'm trapped in "The Hollow" and I can't get out.

You know the country-house drama routine. An assortment of guests assemble for a weekend at a hunting lodge, rural inn, country house, or even beach house. They are not all who they pretend to be. There are deceits and manipulations. Sometimes there's a murder. Often the guests have to help the owner raise money to avoid foreclosure. In a frightening number of these plays, the guests decide to put on a musical talent show to raise money and/or solve the murder. Romantic pairings reshuffle. Inheritances are decided. The bad guys are run off, true lovers survive misunderstandings, the crime is solved by the town fool or an outside detective, and the country house is saved until next season.

You've been to these performances, so don't pretend you are from some different culture. The set always has three entrances; the left to the guest bedrooms; the center to the outdoors; the right to the kitchen and servants quarters. The elderly roles are played by the youngest actors wearing bad gray wigs, mustaches, and beards that look like they came from the Halloween aisle at Hinky Dinky. The kids have drawn on fat black age lines that could be seen from across a football field, and just look like weird facial grafiti in a small theatre. The young female characters are dressed in bright outfits from the junior department at Target, even though costumes for the other players hint at a time period or region. Too often there's a guy stuck wearing lederhosen. Actors of all ages attempt accents that obscure understanding of their lines.

Howard Cosell was criticized because he had never played football. I have never been an actress, except a few times in my marriage that I won't get into in this blog. Still, I've been known to speak in Transylvanian vampire mode while dancing to Buddy Holly and imitating the hairstylist of Fluffy the Paintbrush for my Tuesday first-grade art students. Without hammering my point, the combination of sets, make-up, costumes, and accents in these plays make about as much sense.

Country-house dramas are safe. They take us out of the business and politics of real life, send us on vacation with people we don't know, and serve us the dramatic equivalent of banquet rubber chicken and green beans. They make sure we don't trouble our pretty little heads with contemplating the human condition, moral or philosophical issues.

Bad accents...country setting...biscuits or grits...not who they seem...manipulations of finances...distraction from all philosophical and ethical issues...safely unquestioning audiences...

Good golly, Buddy Holly! The President is entertaining foreign dignitaries down in Crawford again this weekend!